Bug Squad

If you're walking along the cliffs of Bodega Head, Sonoma County, you may overlook them. While you're watching for whales, scouting for seabirds and checking out the hikers, there's a lot of movement in the seaside daises (Erigeron glaucus) and seaside woolly sunflower (Eriophyllum staechadifolium).

Do you know your native bees? Can you distinguish a sweat bee from a leafcutting bee from a cuckoo bee from a mining bee? No sweat? Or, are you...ahem...sweating the answer? You can learn more about native bees at a special presentation on Saturday, Sept.

"Science is full of surprises." Bruce Hammock, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, is fond of saying that in his many talks. "Science is full of surprises.

They're pretty in pink. Well, not just pink. All other colors, too. It's National Honey Bee Day on Saturday, Aug. 20. That's when we officially celebrate the honey bee, Apis mellifera, which the European colonists brought to the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1622.

It doesn't get more real. Yolo County Farm Advisor and children's book author Rachael Freeman Long remembers telling her son stories about an adventuresome, kind-hearted, wildlife-loving boy named Jack and three of his friends--a bat named Pinta, a coyote named Sonny and a crow named Midas.